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A breathlessly entertaining roller coaster ride into Hell, this biographical film about Uday Hussein examines all the dimensions of terrorism by looking in the mirror, and seeing the dual reflection of good and evil in the same frame. Director Lee Tamahori finds the right balance between graphic and gratuitous, and in so doing, delivers a transformative experience that's both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Starring: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier and Raad Rawi

Rating: Four stars out of five

The terror. The terror. Lee Tamahori throws up a mirror to the frightening and fearful face of the Zeitgeist in The Devil's Double, a biographical look at the life of Saddam Hussein's sadistic son Uday, as witnessed through the eyeballs of his body double.

It's quite a trip, at every level, because Tamahori puts us in a choke hold from the very first scenes, and he never lets go. Violence is visceral that way, and in an elegant fusion of message and form, Tamahori lets his frames open up with Bacchanalian abandon.

This movie is all about sex and violence and power. It's about how privileged little princes see the world through the wizened slits of ego and lust. It's about how great big babies find people to enable their amoral ways, and, in so doing, keep the world turning in downward cycles of selfishness. And when they can't find a willing enabler, they torture and blackmail those around them to arrive at the illusion of friendship.

These are relevant themes. Not only do they relate to the universality of taking responsibility for where good and evil ultimately lie; they also address the very heart of what "terrorism" really is, what it looks like, but most of all, what it feels like: terrifying.

The most terrible part of all is that most of what we see on-screen is true. Liberties were taken with the "love story" -- what there is of one, because there is no real respite in this gilded torture chamber -- but the most disturbing parts of this film are, sadly, documented truth.

Without getting into the specifics of the unfathomable villainy, it's safe to say Tamahori establishes a mood through his mixture of blood, sex, violence, ego, oil and politics. It's sticky and crude, but for lead actor Dominic Cooper, it's a playground for one of the best performances you may ever have the pleasure of watching.

Despite the endless horror, this movie is actually enjoyable -- if not fun -- to experience. The credit for this cinematic victory can go to Tamahori for achieving the right balance between graphic and gratuitous, but the lion's share of this roaring and creepy delight goes to Cooper.

The actor who made a dashing debut into the North American consciousness as the nicer creep in An Education scores double points in his dual role.

When he plays Uday, helped with the placement of a dental prosthetic, his eyes are black coals. They burn and smolder without soul every time he smiles. He so completely conveys a profound sense of evil, we have to abandon all our expectations about where the boundaries are. This guy could do anything, and Tamahori may well show us anything.

The only way this is palatable for a viewer is if there's a strong moral compass amid the chaos. Fortunately, we have the Doppelganger, Latif. Everything that Uday is, he is not. Latif is the noble soldier and son. He does what disgusts him because he loves his family, and they will be tortured and killed if he does not comply. He has no control over his destiny, and this is where terror sits.

Tamahori mirrors this in the frames by making sure the movie eventually cycles into a death spiral. Everything starts to fragment, from the characters' assumed integrity to their actual physical bodies. Even the nation of Iraq starts to crumble in the wake of the war in Kuwait.

The images are all beautiful and ugly at the same time -- as are the people. But because we get the privilege of being behind the eyes of the villain, the devil's double, we get to revisit iconic moments in history from an altogether altered perspective.

The end result is a hypnotic and altogether enjoyable descent into Hell.

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